


two parts kindness, one part determination; a pinch of perseverance, and a little bit of monster with a splintered soul

by fireflyfall



Category: Homestuck, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AND their prince of heart's splinter, Hal gets a body, Lets face it, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Shenanigans, and dirk trusts hal even less :/, basically just me throwing them all into the underground and seeing what happens, bc gdi whose great fucking idea was it to stick ALL of their destroyer-class players, bc hal trusts dirk abt as far as he can spit on him, dirk and hal are probably going to murder each other before anyone else does, feat: jade being a badass and literally the only functional one in this damn place, in the SAME FUCKIN PLACE with only jade as supervision, why is that not a tag :0
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:49:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24197755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyfall/pseuds/fireflyfall
Summary: Five unlikely people appear in the Underground. Fortunately for the monsters, they have friends who will do anything to get them back, and if the barrierjust so happensto be in the way of that - well. I’m sure we all know what happens next.That's not the point of this story, though. Prepare for shenanigans and absolute tomfoolery (and possibly theories about the workings of the SOUL).
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50





	two parts kindness, one part determination; a pinch of perseverance, and a little bit of monster with a splintered soul

**Author's Note:**

> i am so mad at mobile rn ajjdhjdjshsh  
> there are SO MANY TAGS i want to add to this fic but NONE OF THEM ARE BEING ACCEPTED BC AO3 ON MOBILE CHROME IS STUPID AND ISNT LETTING ME MAKE ORIGINAL TAGS ONLY RECOMMENDED ONES
> 
> anyways ill update the tags on this when i get to my computer ig :(
> 
> *update: tags acquired >:)

**-== > Be the robot kid.**

You cannot be the robot kid, since no one but the robot kid is allowed to be him. He’s too cool for anyone else to be him. Well, except that one time he shared a body with the horse-loving troll that he temporarily merged with via SBurb bullshit, he guesses. Ah, good times.

And he’s not a ‘robot kid’, anyways, he doesn’t even _have_ a robot body! You know what the definition of a robot is? A machine. He is _not_ a machine, and clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about if you immediately assume every AI is a robot like a fucking idio-

**-== > Alright, alright! Stop chewing out the narrator, we get it.**

Good.

**-== > Observe the juvenile Artificial Intelligence boy.**

You are now observing the juvenile boy who is an AI.

Or, well- _was_ an AI.

This kid is Hal Strider. He is currently freaking the fuck out.

**-== > Looks like he’s pretty busy. How about we take a look at someone else?**

* * *

**-== > Be the seadweller not-human.**

“ _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-_ ”

“GET BACK HERE, HUMAN!!”

“HOWV MANY TIMES DO I HAVWE TO TELL YOU, I’M NOT _ACTUALLY_ A HUMAN- _HOLY FUCK LAY OFF WVITH THE SPEARS, LADY!_ ”

“NOT UNTIL I SKEWER YOU WITH THEM, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

“I’M FLATTERED, REALLY, BUT I’M NOT LOOKIN’ FOR ANYTHIN’ CALIGINOUS CURRENTLY, THANKS!”

“ _GRRRAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!_ ”

“ _FUCK!_ ”

**-== > Er... yeah, we’ll… we’ll get back to them later.**

* * *

**-== > Back to Hal. How’s he doing now?**

His breaths feel heavy and unnatural rushing in and out of his mouth, his lungs; his heart beats at a quick, panicked rate as he continues to take stock of his situation and _that’s not right._

He’s breathing. He has a heartbeat. _He shouldn’t be breathing._ He’s a fucking AI in a pair of shades, he _can’t_ breathe, he doesn’t have a _heart,_ he _shouldn’t have a body that requires a complete respiratory system to function._

He’s sitting on the ground, and he can _feel his legs holy shit this is so fucking weird._ There’s something under him, pressing into his shins, gentle and... soft. Yes, soft. He remembers what that feels like, but he’s never touched a flower before because Dirk had never had access to any in an apartment in the middle of the fucking ocean. They’re buttercups, he notes distantly, staring at the flowers. And putting aside the fact that he can see a thousand times better with actual _eyes_ instead of the high-definition camera installed into Dirk’s shades, his mind isn’t working as it should be, processing speed a million times slower and overwhelmed from feeling _so much._

Hal isn’t sure how long he just sits there, breathing and _feeling_ and listening to the pounding of his heart fade quietly from his ears. Staring at himself and the flowers and drinking in every non-pixelated detail, from the skin pale like Dirk’s to the simple black jeans and the striped, red and dark grey shirt Hal wears; to the shades that had fallen off his face at some point, to the soft golden-yellow of the buttercups that cushion the ground beneath him. Tasting the slight dampness in the air, smelling the warmth of it from the sun’s rays high above him (huh, so sunshine _does_ have a smell).

Eventually, he gets up. That takes some figuring out, trying to remember how it felt to stand when he was still a part of Dirk, but he manages it. Walking is less of an obstacle than he expected, his body ( _he has a_ body _now, holy fucking SHIT_ ) eventually taking the hint and moving as if by muscle memory.

After a few loops around the room to get used to the motions, Hal tries to see if he has a sylladex. He does - the modus is the same as Dirk’s - but... it’s empty. Hm. And he can’t access the strife portfolio, either. That’s kind of worrying, but there isn’t anything he can do about it right now.

At this point, he’s pretty sure he has _not_ somehow hijacked Dirk’s body and taken control like an alien body-snatcher from those pre-Condesce Earth movies - as far as he can tell, this body has no calluses, no scars, nothing to mark this body as _Dirk’s._ It’s a shame he hadn’t managed to somehow snatch Dirk’s meatsuit out from under his nose, but Hal sure isn’t complaining about the extra body, wherever it came from.

And, well; that also means it’s _his._ His and his alone, nothing he has to share with Dirk _ever,_ and boy is that a fucking treat. He could almost jump for joy with all the sheer, exuberant _delight_ coursing through his awesome Strider-brand veins.

**-== > Alright, that’s enough of that. You’ve had more than your fair share of screen time, buster.**

* * *

**-== > Be the witchy dog god.**

You cannot be the witchy dog god right now. She’s pretty busy trying not to get skewered, thank you very much!

**-== > Seriously? Her, too?**

Yes!

**-== > What, can’t even spare a tiny portion of brain space to narrate?**

_No!!!_ Oh fuck, fireball wall incoming- JUST GET OUT OF HERE ALREADY.

**-== > Oh. Well. Fine, then.**

* * *

**-== > Watch the former AI talk to a sentient flower.**

“Howdy! I’m Flowey!” the _talking flower_ says the second Hal steps into the room, and he’s already suspicious just from that overly ‘friendly’ smile alone. “Flowey the flower!” And also, its voice is obnoxious as _fuck_ \- that subtly layered tone with that _high_ of a pitch should _not_ be humanly possible, was it _made_ for the sole purpose of annoying the fuck out of its enemies?

Then again, it’s a fucking flower. Hal would definitely remember if he had seen any talking fucking flowers in the Game before, but he guesses that it’s not much of a stretch after consort skeletons and alien fishbitch tyrants sending the world into a watery apocalypse.

“Seriously? _Flowey the flower?_ ” Hal says flatly. “Did your parents look at you when you were born and go, ‘Oh man, he’s totally a Flowey, this is definitely not a name that would ever get our kid teased the fuck out of in school or anything’?” Do talking flowers have genders? Does it really matter, anyways? “God, I pity you, having such a horrible fucking name. Platonically, of course.”

Its smile twitches - something like contempt or annoyance, based on the microexpression - but otherwise stays fixed in a deliberate mask of innocence and sunshine. “You’re new to the underground, aren’tcha?” the flower exclaims, responding to exactly none of Hal’s statements or queries. _Rude._ “Golly, you must be so confused! Someone ought to teach you how things work around here!”

Well. Fine, then. Just ignore Hal, go on your merry way. He’ll see what the flower has to say, first. Hal crosses his arms - because _he can do that now,_ this is still pretty damn surreal - and listens to the flower continue to chatter on through a veneer of boredom, and- what? Ready? Ready for what- WHAT THE FUCK.

...Wow. Okay. Fine. Not the weirdest he’s seen.

Flowey grins wider, if _that’s_ somehow possible, and says in an unbelievably, _obnoxiously_ cheerful voice, “See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of... your...” The flower trails off as it actually _looks_ at Hal’s ‘soul’, staring incredulously at it. “...being.”

Hal looks down at the glowy thing that sprouted out of his chest (his _chest,_ he has a _chest_ now!). He can see why that might be a point of concern.

“Pal,” Flowey says seriously. The smile has slipped off its face, and the distinctly less cheery look actually looks more natural on it. “What the _fuck_ happened to your SOUL?”

“Hal, actually, but you’re close,” he says absentmindedly, peering at the mangled little piece of what is apparently the ‘culmination of his being’. It seems kind of small, though Hal doesn’t really have a proper frame of reference to judge it with. “My soul is just a splinter of someone else’s, s’all.”

Hal’s ‘soul’ is a strange little thing. It’s roughly shaped like a heart; gentle, light silver blobs surround a small sliver of red, with swirls of neon green weaving in and around the soul. And it glows. Has he mentioned that it glows?

“A _splinter?!_ That’s not possible!” the flower screeches. “Even with those monster SOUL parts augmenting it, that _thing_ is so deformed that even if it’s miraculously able to keep itself together, you should have less intelligence than a Surface dog! How are you still even _alive,_ much less talking and sentient?! There is no possible way you could survive with that mangled _abomination_ of a SOUL without-”

And suddenly, Flowey cuts itself off, frowning harshly. Ooh, _secrets._ Interesting. The flower glares at Hal suspiciously, as if _it’s_ not the one who _just so happened_ to oh-so-conveniently be hanging around here when Hal walked in, lost and confused. Yeah, no. Hal’s not buying it.

So of course, the AI- _former_ AI, wow, that is never not going to be weird - ignores the creepy flower in favor of continuing his inspection of his somehow visible soul. It might have something to do with Dirk’s classpect - but no, Flowey speaks as if seeing souls is a normal thing, so probably not. There’s still the possibility, though.

The colorful splinter - because it has to be that, there’s really no other explanation - is almost like a rough, thicker needle, or a nail. Thicker at the top, it tapers off to a point at the bottom. There’s a little something of a smooth, flat curve at the top that was probably the edge of Dirk’s soul, and sharp, jagged edges going down, where the soul piece must have splintered off; though the harsh edges are smoothed off in parts that suggests the splinter ( _Hal’s soul_ ) has been doing some growing since he first broke off from Dirk and became a separate being.

“...Hey. Are you even still listening?”

“Nope.” He doesn’t like the look of those green swirls. It’s uncomfortably close to the color Lord Califuck English likes to don. Oh, right. Speaking of that guy...

“Oh, you _brat-_ AAUGH!” Hal looks up, and in a blink, Flowey’s gone, the only sign of its existence the small, freshly upturned pile of soil on the ground. There’s a goat lady standing just behind the spot the flower used to be.

...A goat lady? Seriously? First the sentient flower, now a _literal furry?_

**** **-== > OKAY, Hal time is over! This story needs variety at ** **_some_ ** **point!**

* * *

**-== > Be the constantly capricious clown.**

You cannot be the constantly capricious clown.

**-== > SERIOUSLY.**

Yes, seriously!

**-== > Why the fuck not?!**

He’s not exactly thinking coherent thoughts right now, man. Too busy tripping out over all the snow, among other things.

**-== > ...Bluh. Fine.**

* * *

**-== > Let’s hope this last guy isn’t too busy for us, either.**

He’s not quite sure how his life got to this point, but Dirk isn’t exactly complaining. Yet.

Though, he’ll probably have to start figuring out what the fuck happened in the very near future, because SBurb has obviously fucked them over in some way and Dirk has to find out _how to fix it._

The last thing he remembers before being thrown headfirst into this hot, fiery hellscape was watching Jane’s teen grandfather - John Egbert - open the door to their new universe. Because of course, of _course_ SBurb would throw some other kind of bullshit at them instead of finally just letting them live their damn lives in peace.

If it weren’t for the fact that he could fly, Dirk probably would have been burnt to a toasty crisp the second he got spat out into this place and directly over a sea of lava. Not exactly a fun way to die.

But he _can_ fly, so he didn’t. And he’s immortal anyways, so now he’s here. Eating cup ramen and watching anime on a computer monitor next to an anthropomorphic lizard lady. It almost feels familiar, like binging a whole season of some obscure anime in the comfort of his apartment, but there’s just enough that’s different that Dirk can’t stop paying attention to every little disturbance around him.

He’s never heard of this anime before, though, so that still takes up a good chunk of his attention. It’s not like Alphys has tried anything yet; and even if the ramen _was_ poisoned, Dirk is confident that death by cup noodles while halfway engrossed in the tenth episode of _Mew Mew: Kissy Cutie_ does not count as a Heroic death in any conceivable universe. Even going by SBurb standards.

The outro song starts playing. Alphys swiftly clicks out of fullscreen and starts up the next episode, motions efficient and practiced like only a veteran anime-watcher could manage. She probably watches a lot of anime. Dirk approves.

Aside from the good taste in entertainment, Alphys isn’t too bad for a bipedal amphibian. Especially so, actually, considering that she’s a) not skeletal, and b) much more intelligent than any consort he’s met. A pretty nervous girl, yeah, but brainy as hell, if the fact that she’s apparently the head honcho scientist of wherever this place is means anything. The ‘Royal Scientist’ schtick makes her sound like kind of a big deal.

Halfway through the twelfth episode, Dirk is thoroughly distracted from the show by a loud exclamation of surprise from Alphys. She directs his attention to the huge monitor on the wall, displaying the viewpoint of one of the many cameras scattered throughout the ‘Underground’.

It’s a troll. Dirk doesn’t recognize them, but- that’s _definitely_ a troll.

“He doesn’t look human, b-but his SOUL isn’t monster grey,” Alphys explains quickly, her signature stutter almost nonexistent with her eyes locked onto the screen. “That’s a pretty dark green, though… and, and the lighter green tendrils don’t look natural, SOULs aren’t supposed to, d-do that. I wonder…”

“That’s a troll,” Dirk says, watching the lanky alien space out through the attacks of the snowflake-looking creature. “Never met him, but I have a hunch as to his identity.” It’s probably safe to go off of the clownish face paint, on this one.

“Y-you do?”

“Yeah. He’s off his fucking rocker, from what everyone else has told me. Murdered a few people in a fit of insanity a couple of years ago.”

“O-oh.” Alphys glances at him. “T-that… t-that’s n-n-not, good.”

“Yeah.” The snowflake dude eventually gives up on getting any reaction out of the probably-a-murderclown troll, seeing as the latter barely budges even when he gets hit by the attacks. They talk to the troll, instead, who continues to be unresponsive.

“...Where’s that?”

“T-that place?”

“Yeah.”

“T-t-that’s Snowdin. I-it’s on the other side o-of Waterfall. W-why do you ask?”

“And which way is Waterfall?”

“Straight a-ahead, i-if you exit the lab t-that way- wait, y-you aren’t thinking of _g-going_ there?!”

“Yeah,” Dirk says, captchaloguing the empty foam cup and cheap disposable chopsticks in his hands. “Someone’s gotta make sure he doesn’t go crazy and start killing everyone.”

“Y-y-you c-can’t g-go!” Alphys protests, her stutter getting worse with her nervousness. “You, you’ll be s-s-seen f-for sure, t-t-the R-Royal G-Guard is s-sure to, to c-catch you!”

He shrugs. “Thanks for the noodles and anime, gotta blast.”

Dirk’s gone before Alphys can finish shouting out “W-WAIT!” after him in a panic, flying across Hotland as fast as he can afford.

**-== > Well. That was unexpected.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time to go to sleep before my body decides not to wake up in the morning good night


End file.
